This post is about the value that I’ve found in making space to self-reflect, psycho-analyze, and just sort of explore for the sake of exploring.  

I feel this kind of introspection is all too rare in our attention hungry and attention disordered tech-forward culture.

How to Not Use a Calendar

In regards to my intellectual curiosity and renewed vigor, the first lever that had to be pulled was a clearing of the schedule and an extended reprieve from professional responsibility. With no tasks to check off, and no 1 on 1 meetings, all hands meetings, meetings about making meetings, or scheduled breaks to think about and prepare for upcoming meetings, I was free to explore. 

But explore what exactly?

It turns out, it was fairly easy to fill my previously booked schedule with a wide range of topics that I hadn’t previously had time to dive into.  Just speaking of the blockchain space, there were whole ecosystems, theories, and communities that I hadn’t had time to explore.  I also had time to re-engage with communities that I used to be involved in; that had been pushed to the margins because of career demands.  

However, the empty calendar stressed me out at first. It felt necessary to still schedule blocks of time for more "purposeful" exploration. Without some sort of scheduled planning, it felt lazy and self indulgent, and my reading and learning didn’t feel focused enough. 

But over time, the empty calendar became it’s own joy until, eventually, I forgot about the calendar altogether. 

Now, if you are retired or have never worked in a modern job, especially a fully-remote job, this may be lost on you. If you have, however, been subject to the seriousness with which a life can be orchestrated around a google calendar, you understand how profound this shift was.

What to Measure

The older that I get, the less shy I am at pointing out the absurdity and psychological depravity of the modern tech career.  As Jenny O’Dell pointed out in her book on capitalistic time, Saving Time, “the origins of the clock, calendar, and spreadsheet are inseparable from the history of extraction, whether of resources from the earth or of labor time from people.”

This is not my attempt to try and be woo woo and harp on work life balance, as much as it is an attempt to assess what I’m even attempting to balance in the first place.

To put a point on it, I recently had a moment with a former colleague, who was also on a momentary work break, where we bandied back and forth on how we should connect with each other. 

Should we schedule something on each other’s personal calendar? Should we do a google meet?

Eventually we realized we could just, you know, talk to each other on the phone, and we could do so, shockingly, outside of a calendar appointment and a thirty minute time slot.  

It turns out, we had free will outside of a calendar and a profession.

Who would have thought?

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